After suspending the freeze of gas prices for consumers, the "Conseil d’Etat" (French Council of State) in a judgment of 10 July 2012, cancels the freeze, as it constitutes an error of law, because it shows that the Government has not incorporated or offset procurement costs borne by the public service provider.

In The Journal of Regulation the summaries’ translation are done by the Editors and not by the authors

ENGLISH

On November 28, 2011, the French Council of State issued a summary judgment suspending the Government price freeze on household natural gas prices because the ‘price scissors’ effect it had was harming competition, and because no superior legal norm justified the freeze.

The Commission de Régulation de l’Energie (CRE — French energy regulator) published an opinion “regarding the draft executive order regarding the regulated tariffs for natural gas publicly distributed by GDF Suez.” This non-binding opinion was published on September 29, 2011, and claims that it is not acceptable for the Government to leave natural gas prices unchanged because these prices do not cover GDF Suez’s costs and symmetrically prevent newcomers from competing with it.

In Estonia, State owns the company Levira Ltd., which operates telecommunications. Meanwhile, the Minister for Economic Affairs which assigns and manages the radio frequencies, numberings and ensures the functioning of the universal service. But a principle of regulation prohibits the cumulation by the state of the quality of regulator and the quality of operator. This is why the European Commission opened an infringement procedure to the right of the European Union against the Estonia 1 July 2012 and asked by a reasoned opinion, to separate clearly its two activities, to ensure the required impartiality attached to the exercise of the powers of regulation.

The regulator of telecommunications and media in United Kingdom (Ofcom) published on, June 6, 2012 a report to measure media pluralism. In response, the State Secretary Jeremy Hunt writes on June 18 letter to the chairman of Ofcom, Colette Bow, for him make comments, astonishments, suggestions and remind him of the prerogatives of the Secretary of State in the matter. The set is made with the friendliness that fits between friends that are written and signed by their first names, formulas are in conditional tense in being enveloped in a respectful classicism, which is the form taken by the confrontation between the executive and the regulator. Tension is always high, whatever form it takes, when it comes to media.

The Gambia has 1.7 million inhabitants and 4 mobile operators. It was common that people use prepaid cards purchased on the street, without revealing their identity. In January 2012, the telecommunications regulatory authority, the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) enacted the obligation to identify the holder of a mobile phone; this declaration must be made before June 15, 2015. It is not possible since January to buy prepaid SIM cards and from June, if the identification is not made, the line will be suspended. Associations are protesting, seeing in this device a mechanism for monitoring of the population.

Two and a half years after having been established by the LME, the French Competition Authority has uncontestably acquired its “place in the sun” amongst the competition authorities of other countries, as demonstrated by multiple indicators.

In Les 100 mots de la régulation (“Regulation in 100 Words”), Marie-Anne Frison-Roche clearly and pedagogically identifies and defines the vocabulary of regulation by making sure, from the introduction, to firmly distinguish between regulation and rule making. Regulation is the maintenance of various balances between principles, rules, and economic and social realities. Rule making is the translation of a collective will emanating from lawmakers or judges, be they national, European, or international.

Competition is the principle element of markets, in the princely sense of the term.The relationships that regulation maintains with competition are ambiguous. It is important to eliminate this ambiguity in order to reveal the ab initio opposition between regulation and competition, to shed light upon the dialectics between both of them. Indeed, regulation may aim at building competition, and is thereby presented as a tool that will cease being used when the competitive market functions effectively.